


Twofold

by LittleGreenPlasticSoldier



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Angst, Angst and Feels, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Depression, F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Masturbation, Men of Letters Bunker, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:52:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9414749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleGreenPlasticSoldier/pseuds/LittleGreenPlasticSoldier
Summary: A mysterious force is making a mess in the bunker.  You and Jane have to figure it out.  Sam and Dean do their damnedest to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkiestdawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkiestdawn/gifts).



Right.  You’re on track.  You’ve got a flow.  Of sorts.  You’ve keyed in the most recent case, copied down everything your journal held, attached the sketches, and tagged it with anything you can think of.  Good.  Well done!  That’s one down… six to go…

A drink to celebrate, yes?

Yes.  

The _rrrrrrk!_ of your chair’s feet on the floor sort of covers it, but you’re sure there’s another sound when you stand. A clattering… in the kitchen, you think.

Calculations crowd into moments.  Janey isn’t in the kitchen. She’ll be elbow deep in the bathroom, cleaning like she said she would because she’s the kind of person who actually executes her tasks with continuity.  She plans, she starts, she finishes.  She’d have brought the drink before she sat down.  She shouldn’t be in the kitchen.  

Quickly you creep to the doorway, collecting the nearest weapon - the samurai sword from atop the bookcase - and ready yourself for a surprise.  It wouldn’t be the first time one of you has frightened the other with caution, but a Turkish mummy appeared in the war room last winter, and no one thought coming up on that with a bat was silly.

There’s been nothing else, no other noise.  No “Only me!”, no sounds of cleaning up.  Stealthy and smooth, you creep into the kitchen and see… nothing.

But there are bowls on the floor, the stainless steel set that nest together.  They’re scattered on the tiles, like they were dropped, far from their place on the shelf, and haven’t been moved.

Dean Winchester kneels on the other side of the mess, paused.  He’d just finished the last of the cleaning up, put the pie in the oven, and the nest of bowls slipped from his washing-wet fingers as he turned.  

Now he’s wide-eyed at the sight of you above him, with a 3 foot blade that he knows, from experience, is very sharp.  “Woah!  Steady there, princess!  Hold up a minute-”

“Janey!” You yell clear and loud and ready yourself to swing.

Dean recognises the ready stance and gets up, hands broad to reassure, moving slowly.  “Hey, now, just.  Stay calm, okay?”

You’re looking around the bowls, trying to figure what’s going on.  “Jane!” you shout again, and soon hear her shoes on the floor, down the corridors.

Dean’s eyes dash at the doorway, back and forth to you and your fingers tight and practised on the handle of the sword.  If you’re as good as you look with that thing, he’s trapped already.  

Both of you stand and wait, unmoving.  Then, as Jane’s steps become louder, Dean realises something he should’ve noticed already:  You’re not looking at him.

Jane appears, gun loosely aimed at the floor, and she too looks around the space, quickly sizing up what has you spooked and taking in the very little information there is to glean.

“We got a ghost?” she asks.

“We got a somethin’,” you tell her.

Dean blinks hard, hard enough to keep his eyeballs in his head, and looks between these two striking, formidable women, strangers, in his own home. He only wanted to bake a pie.  “SAAAAAAM?!”

…

“What did you hear?” Jane asks, creeping further into the kitchen.

“Just the bowls scattering.  Nothing else,” you confirm.

Dean is backing up as best he can, frowning hard.  The tightness in his chest only eases when he hears his brother’s footfalls running.  He calls over the women talking to each other.  “Saaam!”

“D’you feel any cold?” you ask Jane, seeing as she’s closer to the evidence now.

“In the kitchen Sam!”

“No, nothing like that,” Jane mutters, and nudges a bowl with her toe.

“I’m here.  I’m- fuck!” Sam rounds the doorway and instantly aims his gun, glaring at Dean when neither woman responds.  “What the fuck?”

“I dunno man.”  Dean talks like he has to be careful of his movements.  The way you and Jane are moving is starting to hedge him back to the island bench.  “Seriously, I dropped the bowls and this one came running in here with _that_.”

“They can’t see you?” Sam half asks, because that’s freaking obvious.  “They can’t _hear either_ of us.”

Jane nudges a bowl again and glances at you.  “I got an EMF in my room.”

“Go get it,” you tell her.

Jane runs past Sam and he glances at Dean before following, checking an easy jog behind her heels as she makes her way down the halls.  Darker and darker his expression becomes as she hones in on their own living quarters, then to his own room and Jane runs inside without hesitation.  He follows her in, everything feeling suddenly further away, sharper, elusive, and looks around, frowning at the room that is his, filled with things that are not.

Jane is quick to pluck the EMF reader from the desk and dashes back past Sam.  A gut need to see Dean again, see him in the same room and real, makes Sam run ahead, cautiously overtaking Jane without a touch.

When Jane left, you spent a few moments worrying that this isn’t the weapon you wanted.  There aren’t many things that need steel to die, especially the more ethereal goobers, but damned if you were running off to get something else.  And then, for just a second, it felt so hard to close your eyes, but you did, you blinked, and now the bowls are back where they belong.

You adjust your stance warily.  “If you can show yourself, Asshole, now’s the fuckin’ time.”

Dean swallows and glances back at where the bowls had been, and silently watches you keep yourself coiled for conflict.  No matter how much he racks his brain, your face, your stance, nothing about you rings familiar.  He braces himself, unsure of whether his apparent invisibility ensures his safety right now, and only hesitates to move sideways when he hears Sam at the door.

“We got a problem,” Sam puffs.

Jane appears beside him, striding forth and flicking on the EMF reader.  The stackle-sound of a mid-low reading fills the room, picking up the background hooey of the bunker and its contents.

You and Sam talk over each other.

“Where are the bowls?” he asks.

“The bowls moved by themselves,” you tell Jane.

Sam and Dean share more meaningful glances as they listen to you explain.  

“They were there and for a moment, it was like I had to push-,” you try to describe it, “ - everything slowed down, dragged on me, and then they were put away.”

“Exactly like that.”  Dean points at you and speaks to Sam.  “I said _I’m just going to clean up the bowls okay?_ , and as soon as I moved one, she slowed right down, pretty much stopped, until I had them back on the shelf.  Didn’t hear me either.”

Jane’s been waving the reader over the room, and you’ve begun to shift sideways, moving towards the tidied bowls, which lets Dean escape the bench.

“So we’re not ghosts,” says Sam.

“It’s not a ghost,”  confirms Jane.

“This is going to drive me nuts.”  Dean grabs his forehead, then remembers Sam’s words.  “What’s the problem?”

“We’re not here,” he says.  Sam talks over you suggesting to Jane that you check the inventory for items that might fiddle with time or space, and he tells Dean, leaning over and pointing towards the living quarters, “Jane lives in _my room_ , and it doesn’t look like my room any more.”

Dean glares at him, so incredulous he’s almost cross, and starts off striding, breaking into a run when he knows Sam is behind him in the corridor.  At his doorway, he bursts through, confused at the weapons around the walls, just as he has them, but with nothing else of his to see.  There’s the dead man’s robe, but it’s the bunker, anyone could have that.  Otherwise, it’s all your boots, your jacket, _yours_.

The room feels smaller.  Dean blinks like he’s focusing on a hologram, and he doesn’t feel comfortable looking any further.  He turns back to Sam breathing hard behind him.  “What the hell is this Sam?”

“Alternative universe?  Shared dream? Time travel?” Sam lists them as they go back to the library.  “We can look in the records for anything that might play with that, like Beatrix Kiddo said.”

“But we’re here, we’re different to the bunker,” Dean thinks aloud.  “We’re the one’s who’re in the wrong place, right?  Who did we gank who’s connected to this kinda power?”

“There’s no way to be sure who could be on that list.”  Sam is grim, mentally flipping through their recent hunts just as Dean is.  Neither of them can recall anything relevant.

In the library, you and Jane sit opposite each other.  She’s clicking through the digitised database of artefacts, and you’re scanning the six hunts you haven’t input yet, looking for a any recent foes who might play with objects.  “It’s gotta be something loopy like an artefact,” you tell her.  “No one’s going to make a spell, or stump us with something as pissy as throwing bowls.”

Sam’s at the card-system he so carefully maintained and almost dislocates his fingers when he finds they’re locked.  “What the fuck?!”

“It won’t even be the same,” Dean says.  

“I don’t care if they spend the whole day in suspended animation,” Sam declares hotly, “I’m researching this shit till we fix it.”  He heads over to the shelves, commenting as he scans, “At least the books are duplicated.”

Dean tilts over the back of your chair, careful to not touch you.  He’s not sure what would happen - maybe it’ll lock him into this place and time, maybe he’ll die, he doesn’t know - but he’s just being extra careful till he’s sure.  From behind you he reads your journal notes.  It seems you write _to_ your journal.  That’s cute.  

He sees: “Oh you would love this SOB.  Grabby little shit.  So happy to have to kill it by **cutting off the left hand** ” it says, the last words bolded to highlight the mode of execution.  “Left hand is the head when in its true form,” it reads.  Dean tucks his chin down and curls a lip.   _Yulch_.  “Very satisfying,” you’ve added, “nice crunchy sound,” and Dean smirks a little.  He thinks he would’ve liked you.  In fact, he would’ve liked you quite well.  He can manage to not look down your top, but he does that by looking at your hair, your scanning fingers, and the way your work your tongue over your lips while you read.

 _Not the time or place_ , Dean thinks to himself, then smirks because, well, there’s literally no other time or place when he could look at you.

“Fuck.”  Sam grumbles behind him.  “I can’t. These fucking books. I can only get enough purchase to pull the spine about an inch,” he complains.  “It’s really hard to pick them up.”  

Dean turns to say something, but Sam has a thought first.  “I don’t think it can be an artefact,” Sam says, his gaze flitting around the floor as he thinks.  “That should be much more localised, but we’re moving around the bunker freely.  And in other rooms to them too.”

“It could be specific to the bunker,” Dean offers, helping Sam think it out.  “These walls keep things out, might keep somethin’ in too.”

“We need more,” Sam says and goes to look over Jane’s shoulder at the laptop.  “God, it’s different.” He peers at the database, the way it’s arranged.  “I mean, it’s kinda… better.”

Dean raises his eyebrows and comes to look too.  “Damn.  That’s neat.”

You get up from your chair and head for the card drawers, asking Jane “You got the key for this?”

She leans forward and pulls off her necklace, tossing it to you, and Sam comes to your side so he can look at the cards as you flip through them.  “It’s the same,” he breathes.  “That’s my handwriting.”

Sam looks up at Dean, both of them exhilarated with hope, and leans down to talk at you, firm and loud.  “What’s the date?”

You don’t feel his breath, don’t hear a thing, and keep flicking, looking for an old note you thought you recalled.

“What’s the date?” Sam tries again, a bit louder, a bit desperate.

Dean starts towards Sam, patting the air, even though he can empathise with his urgency. “Sam, I don’t know that yelling is going to help-”

“You can move bowls Dean.  I gotta be able to move the fucking air,” he mutters, then yells “ _What’s the date!_ ”

You flick more, oblivious, and Sam leans in close, close enough that his breath should move your hair, and shouts, in bold, scratching his voice.  “WHAT! IS! THE! DATE?!”

Your chest drops and your eyes lose focus.  A chill thrills from your ear, down your spine, making you shudder all over.  “Jane,” you whisper, then breathe in for some volume.  “Did you hear that?”

Dean and Sam look at her hopefully.

“No.  I heard nothing,” she looks at you, concerned at your worried face.  “What was it, Y/N?”

Sam comes around the other side of you, and you look at Jane as he leans at your ear again. “WHAT! IS! THE! DATE?!”

Your next breath is a gasp, a tight, swallowed gasp that makes your lips frown and your eyes apologise. By the time he’s stepped back, watching for your response, your fingertips are on your lips.  “He’s.  He’s asking for the date,” you tell her.  “He sounds… far away.”

“You gonna tell him the date?” She’s encouraging, helping you stay calm, your wonderful, steady friend.

“Well, it’s December 6, 2020,” you say, pausing a moment in case there’s a response.  Sam stands up straight and gapes at Dean, not at all surprised when he turns away and throws a hand up, barking “Son of a _bitch!”_

“But Janey,” you add carefully, “it sounded like Sam.”

Dean whirls around to stare at you, and Sam is just as surprised.  

“Sam?” Jane blinks at you, her gaze soon slipping down, seeing nothing.  “But why would he ask you and not me?”

“I dunno, Sweetie,” you tell her.

She takes a moment, adding that fact to their information, gathering reasons that won’t break her heart.  “Do you think Dean is with him?”

You don’t answer.  You hesitate to hope that both of them have returned, and if they have, something is extraordinarily wrong.  If it’s only Sam, worse still.

But this changes everything.  One of them could’ve knocked over the bowls.  One of them could’ve been asking for help.  Sam, at least, doesn’t know the time.

“I don’t think we’re looking for a thing,” you say, managing to keep the wobble out of your voice.  You’ve got a job to do, damn it, and it might be saving your boys all over again.  “I think we’re looking for a person.”

…

You all work in silence for awhile, a long while really, but everyone’s attention dips in and out of the present so much no one realises how long it’s been.

You clench your jaw, closing your journal. “It’s probably not anything from the last 6 months.”

“Is that good?” Jane asks.

“Sorta.  Literally nothing there I want to revisit,” you comment.  “Do you think it’s been extra rough or is it just getting used to working without them?”

“Bit of both,” she shrugs.  She leans over her keyboard a bit.  “We’re doing good work though, Y/N.  With the bunker? And our resources?  The two of us have never gotten so much done in such a short time.”

“Yeah.”  You keep finding your gaze slipping to the seats around you, wondering if Dean is sitting in any of them.  “It’s just, if it’s older than that, it kind of doubles the possibilities, now that it includes them.”

“That was always more likely,” Jane mutters grimly.  Her tone makes you stare at nothing.  Losing Sam and Dean has stolen her lightness.  She used to be full of consolations, maybes, cautious hope.  And it feels like she won’t resurface out of spite, even though, in the greater scheme of things, everything is as it should be, and she knows it.  You wish you had Dean here to talk to her like he could, without your blunt worry and without Sam’s towering heart.  You could say something to him and he’d find a way to end up watching something they’ve already seen, unpacking their feelings on the couch.

In his reality, Dean’s sitting against the end of a bookshelf, legs out long in front, dutifully fucking himself over with all the thoughts that he might’ve had to fall for you.  He stares at your face and thinks of how you’ve had him kiss your cheek, your lips.  He imagines the view down your neck where his breath would warm you, fingers tilting you so he can push his lips under your jaw, lick your lobe into his teeth.  Then he starts to look at your clothes and how your body fills them, imagines what your shapes are like beneath, your bare feet in his hands, passing him things without looking, bringing him coffee while he fixes Baby, casual contact and quiet smiles… scene upon scene of teasing domesticity in the bunker.  And he’d be envious of you, bitterly so, for having actual memories of this, if he didn’t like you so much already.

Dean snaps himself out of it and asks Sam “Why don’t you yell at her?”  He twists in his spot to work his itchy muscles and numb butt.

“I don’t want to.”

Dean thinks it’s a bit peculiar that he wouldn’t try something that seems to work.  “What are you doing?”

“Fucking trying to get at least one book out of this tight shelf,” Sam grits.  His hands have been dragging and sliding over it’s cover for ages.  Dean watches for a while, then gets up to help.

With Sam’s hands broad on the covers and Dean thinking like a little steam engine at the top and bottom edges, eventually these two grown men pull a book out of a shelf.  They heave a sigh of relief as it tumbles to the floor, and both women snap their heads around to look at it.

With nothing nearby to see, Jane slowly stands.  She comes to the bookcase and looks down at the rows of spines, seeing several that now protrude.

You watch her open the fallen book, turn to the contents page, and wait to see if anyone does anything.  Then she drops a pencil on the paper and watches, breathing heavily as someone’s (Sam’s) finger slides it, haltingly, (with all his concentration,) to lay beneath the chapter “Love as an ingredient… p.156”

“Seriously?” Dean snaps at his brother.  “That’s what you want her to see?”

“Well, what if they’ve dragged us here, without realising?” Sam reasons, defending himself.  “We need to include them as the catalyst.  They should know they might be the ones doing it!”

“Well, in that case,” growls Dean, “how do we know we didn’t create two women to have in the bunker?!”

Sam scrunches his face at the idea.  “Dean, this is crap.  They can’t even see us-”

“They’re gonna think we brought ourselves here!” Dean barks.  “From beyond the grave or some shit!”

Sam breathes tightly, jaw clenched, hoping to God Dean’s wrong.  

Jane’s been scanning the chapter, and begins to relay to you what she finds.  “We might have an artefact here that we can activate,” she looks at you.  “With our longing.  We could bring them here without realising.”

Sam only gets to relax half-way because you say, “Maybe they brought themselves here.”  

Dean’s presents your response to Sam with an open palm - _ta-da!_ \- glaring flatly at Sam while they sit on the floor.

“You don’t think they’d do a better job of it if that were the case?” Jane looks at you.

“Well, I’d like to think they’re not stupid enough to even try,” you tell her.

“That one’s mine,” points Dean, and Sam huffs a short smile.

“I wish I knew which them it was.”  You slump back in the chair, looking at Jane but conscious of who might be watching.  “Or if they’re even here all the time.”

Jane looks down at the words about love, and how strong it can be… “We’ve missed dinner.”  She doesn’t want to think about more than is necessary, and is up and walking to the kitchen before you can offer a hug or any kind words, and she offers none for you.  You don’t know if Dean is present, but you can’t tell if that’s better or worse than knowing Sam is here.

You drag your fingertips across your forehead and run through everything you’ve thought of so far: angels, Gods, demons, artefacts, enemies, spells you’ve recently used that might include a spell that could do this, spells you used almost a year ago, _anything_ you did a year ago, a lunar month ago, a day ago, a decade ago, accidental wishes…  you can’t even see a gap.  Maybe it’ll come to you later.

You stand to go, Dean and Sam rising behind you, but Dean doesn’t realise you mean to pick up the book from the floor.  You turn, going around your chair and your shoulder runs into a force.  All of you shudders, caught in a rattling, magnetic patch of space, and the smell of him is shaken up into your nose as your voice stutters out - _u-u-u-h-hu_ \- and then it stops, letting you stumble into the next step.  You grab your shoulder and cry out, crushing your eyes shut and covering your mouth so Janey can’t hear you hold back your noise.

 _Dean is here._  Laundered flannel.  Aftershave.  Warmth.  The echo of him grunting, too close.  Your Dean is right here, somewhere.  And you can’t hold him.  You sob once, and hug your lucky, aching shoulder closer still.

Beside you Dean’s recovered somewhat.  His throat aches from the choking surprise, and Sam’s holding him like he might’ve dislocated his arm.

“You okay?” Sam asks, low and urgent.  “Dean?”

“Uh fuck!” Dean pants, coughs and clears his throat, leans on his knee.  “Jesus Christ.  That was awful.”  He looks up from where he leans over, blinking his watery eyes, and Sam keeps a firm hand on his shoulder as they watch you reign in your shaky breathing, pushing each one out your nose because your fingers still press against your lips.  You blink and blink, look up and blink it away, and massage your shoulder like it can comfort you better.

Sam talks quietly, with a solemn swallow.  “Remember in older games, how you’d run your player into an object and the different parts would flicker back and forth all boxy and jumpy? Like the pixels took turns to be in front?”

Dean looks up at Sam, listening.

“That’s what it looked like.  Like a glitch.”

Dean looks back over at you, almost back to a kind of neutral.  “We better not be in some fucking video game.  I’m gonna Donkey Kong someone’s ass.”

…

Jane’s got two plates of leftovers going, one still turning in the microwave.

Sam and Dean follow you in, eventually choosing to sit on the floor, next to the far door.  

She sits and shovels food into her mouth and soon you’re opposite her, feeling the textures more than the taste.  It seems like you should start swapping memories of your time with Sam and Dean, share a chuckle at the shits and giggles, lift the mood a little.

“I was thinking of that time the mummy turned up in the war room,” you start.  Jane doesn’t respond.  “How I just _went at it_ with a bat ‘cause that’s all I had.”

She digs at her food and doesn’t really act like you’ve spoken.

“And then Dean went off to find another bat ‘because he assumed that was how to kill it.”  

“Maybe we should keep a bat in the library,” she comments plainly.

“Maybe we could do rings of different metal around it, for the different beasties.”

Jane’s eyebrows bounce a bit, and she gets up, fills two glasses with water, returning without a word, until, “That poor mummy.  Looked like it was made of dough by the time you’d finished.”

“Well, it had no blood, so it didn’t seem so bad.”

“Did you two seriously just beat it until Sam and I got back with the scythe?” She looks at you, something like her old self.

“Yup,” you’re trying not to smile.  “Even sang a song for a bit, got a rhythm going.”

Jane stops chewing and looks at you, blinking wide.  “How did you skip that piece of news?”

You clear your mouth and sing quietly.  “IIIIII been working on the raaaailroad, aaaaall the livelong daaaaay!”

She snorts into the back of her hand and you giggle, watching, storing the sight.

“Oh my god,” murmurs Dean.

“Yeah,” breathes Sam.  Their elbows rest on their knees and they imagine the four of you working together, in this home, while your bitter-sweet moment fades away before them.

Jane stops her potato poking and clears her mouth.  “Sometimes I wonder if we should’ve gone to the trouble of collecting all the remnants.  You know?  All the little bits of evidence of them in all those police stations?”

You look at the bowls in the shelves, not thinking too hard.  “We could never have found it all. All those aliases before us.  They didn’t always record when they used which.”

“Hmmm.”

“You know what?” you say, slapping on a slightly cheerier tone.  “They’re okay.”

Jane chews and looks at you, waits for you to go on.

“They are.  Sam can talk.  He can ask relevant questions, so he’s lucid and thinking.   _Someone_ can pull out useful books, so they know the bunker a bit.  They’re not in a completely alien space.  Dean’s not bleeding-”

“Dean’s here too?” Jane doesn’t miss a beat.  “How do you know he’s okay?”

“Yeah.”  You look at your food, but can’t bring yourself to describe that strange contact.  “…Just a vibe.”

She looks at you like there should be more, and you semi-roll your eyes.  “It’s fine, I just,” - half the story is enough - “I smelled him.  He smelled… not hurt.  Nothing metallic, no blood or adrenaline.”

“Okay,” she nods steadily and thinks.  “Okay, well it’s late.  If they’re fine, then we can afford to get some rest.  ‘Cause I ain’t got squat on this.”  She drops her fork on the empty plate and gets up.  “There just aren’t enough clues.”

“Yeah, shits me too.”

Dean has a late realisation, and smacks Sam’s arm.  “Hey, we should check the rooms before they get in there, see if there’s anything of ours we should look at, while they clean up.”

They scramble up, jog down the hall, and start quietly creeping to see what they can see.

You and Jane wash things and take a few minutes before calling it.  

“You don’t still think about it, do you?”  she asks.  “The actual… end, I mean.”

“No, not so much these days,” you reply, leaning against the bench.  “I think I cycled right through incapacitating guilt and back around to Don’t Know What the Fuck I’m Doing, again.”

She smirks and leans too, thinking.

“We did the plan, we did as we promised,” you say, paraphrasing familiar lines.  “And they made us promise so that the decision, and the guilt, would be out of our hands.”  

Jane nods along with the things you’ve always told yourselves.  “But the longing,” she says.  “I don’t know that I need a mystical artefact to bring them back to life.  I feel like I could just… will it.”

You look at your best friend, your workmate, hunter partner for life, and see how much older you both are, in her.

“Don’t you ever want to?”  She asks you like she’s sorry.

“I wish it had never happened,” you tell her.  “I long for… that alternate timeline when we’d figured out a solution where they’d lived.  But I don’t wish they’d come back.  It wouldn’t go well.”

She smirks.  “You sound like Sam.”

You push off from the bench with soft smile. “Well, he was always my favourite.”

Jane joins you, nudging your shoulder, and you link arms all the way back to your rooms, silent and slow, both your minds going back to what you can do to fix things.  Near her door, you hug and sigh, and share a smile before you keep walking.  

Soon enough you find yourself leaning against your closed door, staring at the bed you and Dean once shared.

…

Jane lets the door hang open an inch, because she likes to hear if you go by, and starts to strip off the day’s clothes.

Sam, who froze in surprise when she silently appeared, stands on the other side of her bed.  At the sight of her pulling up her top he gasps _Crap!_ and faces the wall.

Sam’s frustrated with himself and all his bad luck. There’s nothing here of his that can help, and he can’t open anything to see further.  Then he hears the cupboard doors, and turns, despite his manners.  Jane walks into the ensuite in her bra and panties, and Sam creeps around the bed.  He sees a few of his shirts, and drags his fingertips over the fabric without thinking, flinching from the jostling conflict of two uncontemporary things in space.  He clenches his fists, a flash of fury at the discomfort and at the inconsistencies of what does and doesn’t care about contact, then shakes it all out again.

On the floor of the cupboard is his keepsake box.  He crouches down, frowning at the wooden case, and although the thoughts in his head start off hopeful and pleading, the feeling in him is sheer determination and warning.   _This is my fucking box, and I will goddamn open it._

His fingertip catches on the lid’s edge and lifts, and Sam swallows deep.

There are his things.  The cards, lighter, photos, everything he’s collected.  Plus two movie tickets.  “Justice League” says the title.  November 2017.  Late Fall.  In Denver.  His mind imagines the weather and the asking and the popcorn, the two of them close and her smiling at him, all of it, before he can stop himself.  Half hidden beneath the tickets is a printed out picture, run-off on the colour printer they’ve used to mock up documents.  It’s an action shot so it’s a bit blurry but the moment is so very clear.  

It’s of Jane straddling Sam on the couch and it looks like she just started tickling him.  It’s possibly the worst picture he’s ever seen of himself, with an ugly laugh, gummy and chin-tucked, and Jane’s face is mostly hidden by his, just one eye, a delighted crescent, as he’s grabbing her wrists away from his ribs.  His whole body has hinged up, feet off the table, back off the cushions, as he reacts to her clawing fingers in his sides.  He doesn’t remember ever laughing like that.  And one of them has printed off this picture to tuck it in with the memories Sam holds precious.

“I wish we still had Castiel around.”

Sam jumps up, chest heaving at being caught.  The door is wide open and she’s wearing a towel now.  He looks around the walls for distraction.

“The others are all so gutless,” she mutters, putting her hair brush back on the sink bench.  “But it has to be a person, an entity, I think… I dunno… I might go for a wander into the acquisition room, see if anything feels different down there.  Shit, maybe that’s where Cas is.  I dunno.”

Sam knows she isn’t talking to him, exactly.

Jane releases her towel, drapes it over a rail, and turns on the shower.  Sam turns away a bit more and squishes his eyes closed at what he caught.  Maybe it’s because he hasn’t let himself look at her properly, but she seems perfect.  His heart thumps in his chest, shouting at him to look some more, take a snapshot, but he doesn’t.

When he hears the curtain flick closed, Sam hazards a peek, and she’s gone, into the shower.  He looks at the desk chair, completely tucked in so not available for him.  He considers the patches of carpet he could use to wait.

“The thing is, I don’t _want_ to see you.”

It’s rude.  He’s intruding.  He doesn’t belong here, certainly not _here_.  But she’s talking to him, going through something and the idea of parking himself out here and ignoring her, that feels even worse.  Miserly.  The least he can do is listen.

Sam creeps into the bathroom and stands outside the shower, looking at the shadow of her against the floral plastic, then able to make out her shoulders and wet hair as she faces the stream and runs her hands through her locks.

“If you’re here and I see you, I don’t know that I’ll let you go,” she says.  Her voice is light, casual, but Sam can hear roughness at the edges.  “I keep trying to imagine you’re a rotten corpse, and not your usual healthy… happy… strong… self.”

Her gestures slow, for a few seconds, and then she begins again.  “It doesn’t matter though.  You shouldn’t be here.  We have to fix it…  We have to fix it.”

Sam leans his shoulder against the wall and looks past the edge of the curtain, at the exposed pipes of the shower, watches the tiles get splashed with water flicked from her elbows and hair as she moves.

Jane’s hands appear, fingers on the tiles as her shadow slows again, then palms, gently placed either side of the pipe to help steady herself, and she lets her head rest against them too.

“I miss you.”  Her voice is so high, so sad, threadbare words pulled through a wrought mouth.

Sam thinks of the photo and how happy they seemed together.  He feels himself start to break for her.

“I feel hungry, all the time, and I don’t want to eat anything.  And I eat because you would want me to.  I do everything because you’d want me to.”  Jane talks crisply and quietly as the water slips over her body.  Sam can tell the saltwater from the fresh.

She watches her fingers shift idly, little increments and rubbing in the grout.  “You and Y/N are the only things that keep me from trying to bring you back,” she whispers, her chin shaking loose below her sad gaze, and he feels his throat sympathise, feels his whole face go hot with it.  “You were better than all of us.”

Jane lets her mouth crumple and starts to cry a steady, sad and tired sob.  She pats the tiles with her hands and rolls her head side to side.

Sam reminds himself that this may not be real, it might all be a dream, so it probably doesn’t matter if he cries too.

…

“Shit.”  Dean’s glad that he couldn’t manage picking up the picture, because he totally would’ve dropped it in that moment and given himself away.

He’s trapped, in your room, watching you look at his bed.

You sigh through the two steps to the mattress, slipping off your shorts and climbing onto the blankets like the day has poured you out.  He watches you push the covers aside and tip onto your shoulder, tuck in your legs and lay on your back, pulling the sheets across yourself as your arm flops flat.  Another deep breath and you’re still staring at the ceiling.  

Reaching across to flick off the light feels like climbing out of a swamp, and you flump back onto the bed and finally close your eyes.

Dean looks back at the picture, another colour print out, poorly illuminated by the hallway light through the door vent.  He hopes the 5 minutes of staring was enough to memorise the image.  It’s a selfie he’s taken.  He took it, he can tell, because of the angle of his arm.  He took a frikken selfie.  He’s kissing you, kissing your lips, and you’re looking into each other’s eyes, cheekbones high and contoured with the happy pucker.  It looks like you might be saying something while he’s lips are pressed against yours.  He looks playful and connected.

He’s already decided you’re about as perfect as he could ever hope for.  The weapons are dusted.  The gun is shiney and kept.  Even the toilet wasn’t closed, so he could relieve himself.  You’re fit, bright, beautiful in a gentle kind of way, and you look very hot while wielding a Katana.  What more could he ask for?

He sits himself on the carpet beside the bed and wonders if there’s any point doing something other than sleep, then he notices your arm move.  He watches it, the way your wrist curves over your pelvis, and knows exactly what you’re doing, recognises your deeper breath just like it’s one of his own.  He sits on his ass, rests his elbows on his knees, and faces the wall beside the door, trying not to listen to the only noise in the room.

Over your panties you rub up and down, listen to the tickle that’s a home away from home.  Sometimes, maybe once a month, you’ll spend time pretending Dean is there with you, cheeky, cocky, cocked, you’ll remember the things he used to say, and try to recreate what he used to do to you, flip through your prouder moments of pleasing him.  

Sometimes you’ll just focus on making yourself feel good and relieved, and remind yourself you’re worthy of both, even if you feel like a widow.  Especially, even.

Round and round your fingers go, gathering sensations and herding pleasure.  Your legs pull together and your belly drags you bent.   This time, though, the teasing won’t be enough.  Your fingers feel small today.

Again you throw your reach up to the nightstand and noisily pull out your vibrator.  Panties wrenched free, and lube applied, you pause it, dipped into your entrance, slip your other hand up to your breast and take another steadying breath. You’re too quick right now, flustered within each gesture.  It won’t be good enough if you don’t check yourself and calm down.

“Come on memory foam,” you moan.  “Help me out.”

Dean spreads his fingers over his head and keeps his palms ready above his ears.

Slowly you drag friction over your nipple, circle the tip and pluck lightly.  It’s sweet and it works, and you think of how amazing it was that he could figure out what you liked when the difference between _meh_ and _more_ is only millimeters.  Without thinking, you’ve started to pinch and pull, and it’s almost mean, so you breathe again, and go back to the kind stuff, feeling the heft of your breast like he would, remembering his nose and tongue against its weight.

You dip the toy far enough for the thickness to really push against you, give it an inch or so, and ease off.  This way, it can feel like the whole thing is everything, when you get there.  You can trick your body into forgetting how much better Dean was.  Curving your back, sighing, reaching your jaw, you start to move like someone might be there, over you, over your spread knees and warming skin.

Dean starts to chant in his mind that he doesn’t actually know you, that he doesn’t know your flaws (maybe they’re terrible, maybe he settled, maybe you tricked him, maybe- maybe, maybe he could hit his head hard enough to pass out) and that he definitely doesn’t want to see Sam in the morning with a mess crusted in his lap.  He imagines that maybe you sold Baby after he was gone.  Yeah.

Your fingers slip between your folds again, circling, working a figure-8, randomly tripping over the bud and you start to gasp, moan, like you did for him because he’d say “Yes, I love hearing you,” and he’d press his ear against your lips while he pressed his thumb between your lips.

“Dean,” you sigh. “Ohhh your tongue… all promises.”

“No,” he groans, over in his seam of time where you can’t hear him.  “Please, God…”

“Baby, that… s’perfect.”  You push the toy deeper and feel your legs start to tremble, say your memories low and breathlessly.  “Aaah, hhmmm, don’t stop Baby.  Please, fuck me. Ruin me.”

It’s just what he’d imagine, exactly what he wants to hear. “Rrrr!” Dean gets on his knees, rubs his palms up and down his thighs and blinks up at the ceiling.  He starts to mutter,  “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…”

You feel it all pull, hungry and chasing, and this is usually the moment you flick on the vibrations, thrill your nerves into a screaming fall, but you don’t.  You tilt, at least, and let the toy rub against the nerves inside, but it’s rough, simple, without the heat or breath of him, without his hot weight pressing your thighs apart, long smooth arms threading around your leg or matching your arm above you.  Your skin is isn’t warmed by his radiant heat off your chest, nor his belly kissing yours.  No broad, rough palm that slips around your neck and helps you up to meet his generous, loving lips.  It’s only enough.  It’s the bare bone.  It’s stingy.  It’s _You wanna come? Here, fuckin’ come._  It’s like finishing a three-legged race on your own.  

“Aaha!!” You cry out at the wretched, limping orgasm.  It tips over, there’s ignition, but it rolls to a stop straight out of the gate and you fold onto your side, let the vibrator slip from your body and kick it down the bed in frustration.  You pant and cough a bit and let tears pool in the bridge of your nose.

Dean looks back over his shoulder, lightheaded and panting from evading his desire, and decides to find out if the mattress is like the ground or like a book.

He crawls over and gingerly tests his forearm on top of the blankets.  It holds, takes him, and he can see his dint doesn’t cross over yours.  He can rest his chin on his fist and watch you fall asleep, close enough that his breath should blow over your arm.

“Nothing’s as good as you,” you say to whatever can hear.  Through your tears, your shaky lips, you smile a little and say aloud “You sure did ruin me, Dean Winchester… and I loved every second…  I love you… ssso much. And I’m gonna send your gorgeous, invisible ass home.”

Dean pulls back from the bed, fists on his thighs, and decides he really does want this to be done by a person, so he can kill them.  He watches you fall asleep and imagines that he could draw your past into his future with desire alone.

…

Some time later, when you think you’re about to slip into sleep and your thoughts can’t possibly cannibalise themselves any more, one of them squeaks alive.

“Fuck,” you gasp, and Dean has pushed himself up to sitting already.

“Fuck.”  You throw off the covers, pull on your shorts and burst out the door.

“Fuck what?” Dean calls.

Jane and Sam both heard your door open. Sam shuffles impatiently, waiting for Jane to pull on some shorts before she opens the door, and then they’re following you to the library.

When Jane’s sounds close enough, you call “We’ve been looking for a reason.”

She jogs into the room, coming to lean both palms on the table with all her attention on you.  For a quarter-second you note her red eyes, and keep talking.  “There’s no reason.  This is pointless.  It’s shitty, and useless.”

You slap a great tome on the table, the third in a series you haven’t checked yet because this is the only volume you have of a Cyprian copy of a Greek series, and you did check that but…  Point being, it might have more.

You flip the pages back and forth and soon tap at what you’ve been looking for.  Jane reads it too and runs to the kitchen for things while you run to storage for ingredients.  

Sam and Dean read what’s there, blinking at each other over your wordless communication.  “I thought we were the only one’s who did that,” Dean mumbles.  Sam glances at Dean, a quiet look of pride about them both.

Jane returns with equipment and sets it up on the table, you run in with herbs, powders and oil, and begin to prepare the summoning spell.  Within the minute, you’re holding a gold dagger dipped in goat’s blood, and after a dozen or so specific words a surprised woman stands before the four of you.  As soon as her weight is settled, she starts to giggle.

“What’s so goddamn funny!” Dean barks.

“Did you do this?” you demand, and your words overlap enough that she thinks it’s funny all over again.

She has dark curling hair and rich olive skin, and she laughs like laughter is all she has left.

“Atë, is this you?” you ask again.

She nods, giggling behind her hand.  “I just,” she struggles to talk, “I hadn’t done anything with them yet.”

“Why would you even need to?” you scowl.

“Well everyone else gets a turn!” she snaps, and goes back to giggling again.

“You fucking bitch,” Sam growls.

You and Jane watch as she swallows a chuckle and looks at the space, looks at what could be 6’4” of space, and blithely listens to words you can’t hear.

“You drag them through this, through losing people, and mourning us, and now _this_ , just for kicks?”

Atë laughs again, presses her hand to her belly and laughs - “Oh-hoh, o-hoho!” - because Sam thinks she would care about you all.

“Wait,” Dean steps forward, calm enough to ask a serious question, but unable to hide his hope.

Atë’s attention is shifted to somewhere beside you.

“Is this actually our future?” Dean asks.  “Do we meet them? Or did you just make up this shit to torture us?”

Atë’s eyebrows go up, tilt, and she looks at the nothing with another dazzling smile.  She simply swallows, choking the laughter in her throat while she grins and doesn’t answer anyone.

She points to the space, and talks in a bouncy delighted voice. “Sam is angry for you!” She looks at Jane as though it’s cute.  “And Dean wants to know-”

You lunge, thrust the blade, and Atë gasps.  Her expression drops, falls slack and dreary in seconds, and she slips to the ground with your dagger.

“Damn, Sweetheart,” Dean breathes.

You turn to Jane, and Dean and Sam watch you ask “Do you think it worked?” as your voices and bodies fade out of sight.

The book isn’t there.  The spell stock is gone.  Dean reaches for a chair beside him and wraps his hand over the cold hard wood.  

That was it.

“You okay?” Sam checks.

Dean puts his hands on his ribs.  “Yeah.  I.  Yeah.”  He looks at his stricken brother and they share a beat of silence.  “I’m a bit fuckin’ sad.”

“Yeah.”

…

Before Dean can even see the kitchen door, he’s running, dashing to the oven…

Four minutes left on the timer.

Sam catches up, jogging to a halt behind him, and Dean sighs over the gentle ticking of the oven.

He’s feeling robbed already, so collects the pie before it’s perfectly browned, placing it on a chopping board on the table with a couple of forks.  Sam grabs two beers from the fridge and they sit down to feed themselves in sullen silence.

Sam pulls out his phone and starts tapping…  “So Atë,” starts Sam.

“Let me guess. Greek God of-?”

“Delusion, ruin, mischief and folly,” Sam tells him, not a little bit sardonic.

“Huh,” Dean shakes his head once. “That’s like four flavours of spite.”  He chews some more, thinking about how that interprets the events.  “So it’s like - Don’t believe it; Fuck you; Maybe, maybe not; and Don’t even try.”

“Pretty much,” Sam agrees, and reads what he’s found.  “She was a slighted God, sent by her father, Zeus, ‘to tread on the heads of men’.”

“Oh, well, she nailed that.  And can I just point out,” Dean says, taking a sip of beer, “that it was _my_ girlfriend who figured it out.”

Sam huffs a sour scoff and tinks his fork on the pie dish, Dean grinning in reply.  The timer goes, loud and rattly.

A few minutes later and Sam’s just about finished a very neat quarter of the pie.  “They did figure it out though huh.”

“That they did.  We picked smart ones.”  Dean notices Sam’s thoughtful face.  “What’s your point?”

“They didn’t know beforehand-”

“But we didn’t know-”

“No, I mean, they didn’t know because no one told them.  Their Sam and Dean didn’t know to tell them, not even when they were alive.”  Sam’s collects the neck of his bottle, swinging it in gesture as he thinks aloud.  “So it’s not us.  If that really was our future, we would’ve told them. ‘When this happens, it’s Atë.’ Something like that.”  He sips and watches to see what Dean thinks.

“So you figure it’s an alternative universe?”

Sam shrugs and starts on the next quarter.  “I didn’t.  The index cards were the same.  Everything was essentially the same, except, just years from now and including them.  I mean, maybe my handwriting’s identical in every universe, but those cards were _mine_.  Did you think it was here, or what?”

Dean cuts a careful line across the side of Sam’s share, breaking away his exact half of the pie.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I figured it was the future from this place.  This now’s future.”

“Maybe the timeline will skew off from this point.  Maybe Atë interfered and now it doesn’t happen, we don’t get to meet them.”  At that suggestion, both of them pause.  Sam almost loses his appetite from the mere idea of Jane being taken from him, and Dean feels a kind of gut-cold dread at not having a chance with you.  Then a possibility occurs to him.

“Maybe,” Dean says slowly, “maybe we don’t tell them. Didn’t tell them.”

Sam slows his chewing and thinks at Dean with a heavy brow.

Dean looks through the table, somewhat electrified at his idea, and tongues some pastry from a tooth.  “Maybe we make a pact now.  We promise each other that, if we ever meet them, we won’t say ‘When this happens, it’s Atë’.  What if we swear to each other, right now,” Dean points down with his fork, his gaze charged with what’s possible, “that we never, _ever_ mention it.”

Sam sits as still as Dean’s ever seen him while upright.  His chest pushes breaths in and out, wired with potential, and after a second or two he starts to nod.  “We swear.  We’ll never tell them,” Sam agrees.

“Yah.”  Dean drops his fork in the empty plate and picks up his drink.  “They never knew because we just didn’t say.”

Dean sips his beer and watches Sam understand and nod some more.   _Maybe they might still be ours._  He won’t tell Dean about the movie tickets, and Dean won’t tell him about the selfie.  

Sam half turns, about to stand, with his bottom lip sucked into his mouth.  He and Dean stare at each other a moment and, in their brotherly way, witness the other’s determined hope before it’s packed away for however long.

Sam picks up the empty pie dish and the forks and puts them in the sink.  Dean collects the empty bottles and dumps them in the recycling. “‘Night Sammy.”

“‘Night De.”

…

That night, as they put themselves to bed, Sam and Dean remember their beautiful girls, how they worked and fought, and that you loved them, that they were loved.  In their minds, your smiles are complete, ready and sparkling, and your hair moves and shines under their hands, and forever after your curves and dips and softness and sighs will become hooks in their minds where they’ll hang the hope that you exist and that your paths may cross.

That night, they lay where you might yet be, fist blankets under their chins and stare at their ceilings, maybe pretending someone’s just getting ready for bed and will be there in a tick, sliding in beside them to warm soles on their calves. They drift off and dream of ugly laughing and of kisses captured, and they dream of futures saved.


End file.
